Peasoup

Last week one of the bypaths along the proletarian road wound to a temporary terminus in the Eagles Club Auditorium at Kenosha, Wis. Assembled there, in a confused and earnest clot, were 150 delegates to the 21st national convention of the Socialist Party. Among them few were more confused, none was more earnest than their three-time candidate for the Presidency of the U. S., grey Norman Thomas.

The chances for any sort of progressive national party in 1940 were no greater after the Socialists had acted upon their prime political problem of the moment: whether, when, and how to align with the State and local laborite groups patterned upon New York's American Labor Party. By an infinitesimal margin the convention downed Leader Thomas' proposal that Socialists oppose the nomination but not necessarily the election of "capitalist" candidates on labor party tickets. It followed University of Chicago's Economist Maynard Kreuger in permitting affiliation with other groups only on condition that Socialists oppose any capitalist candidate endorsed by their nominal allies. Since few aggressive bodies would welcome this sort of allegiance, the Socialists thus retained not only their integrity but their status as negligible quantities in next fall's Congressional elections.

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